If you’ve been on my blog for a while, you’ll remember a post I did at the start of last year where I wrote about the books that had the greatest impact on me in 2016. Well, in a shocking turn of events, I’m gonna share with you some of my tops reads of 2017. How exciting!

October not only brought on longer nights and colder mornings, but it also offered a lot of exciting stuff. After a lovely reception from my September catch-up post, I thought it would be rude not to do a little summary about the last 30 days, too.

You may have noticed that it’s been rather quiet around these parts, which is mainly attributed to me starting uni. I’m having a great time, learning a lot, but still slightly struggling with that work/life/uni/blog balance. This is a process though, a journey, and with a couple of events coming up and post ideas up my sleeve, hopefully I’ll be more active on here soon.

Part of doing a Creative Writing degree involves — surprise surprise — a lot of reading. Some for my course, but mostly recreational to get the creative juices flowing. As a result, I have been buying a lot more books than usual in the past month or so. In fact, I have purchased 11 books in the past 7 weeks alone. Holy moly! But I love that I now have an excuse to make more time for reading — and I’d love to share with you some of the absolute gems I’ve been accumulating.

I’m lucky in that I get to go to Paris pretty often since my mum moved there at the end of 2014. As great as it is getting to visit this heckin’ cool city twice a year, travelling ain’t cheap. However, I’ve learnt a thing or two about getting around on the (somewhat) cheaps, with the added bonus getting to check out cool places that I wouldn’t otherwise know about if my mum didn’t live there. Here are some tips I have picked up about visiting this fab city over the years.

Back in August, I wrote a little post delving into my journey with podcasts called 5 Podcasts You Should Listen To, and this time I am back to tell you about some more.

I’ve really taken to this form of media. It reminds me of my childhood and early teens, when I would turn on the radio to tune into Southern FM’s daily breakfast show (any Brighton natives remember Danny and Nicky in the Morning?). Hearing the bright chirpy voices was a great start to the day. However, as I got older, I started to favour listening to music or watching YouTube.

Podcasts are great, because they give you a chance to consume something as passively or actively as you want. I not only listen to podcasts when I travel, but when I’m cooking or cleaning, before I fall asleep, or even just in my bedroom when I feel like closing my eyes for a bit and not have to endure the silent abyss.